Elisabeth Mosshttp://www.adweek.com/taxonomy/term/14142/all
enHow Mad Men, by Looking Back, Changed the Future of Advertisinghttp://www.adweek.com/news/television/how-mad-men-looking-back-changed-future-advertising-164640
Andrew Adam Newman<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/0511_adw_cov-01-2015.jpg"> <p>
&quot;On Stage 9, the wardrobes of the male cast members include white shirts, cuff links, tie clips and hats,&quot; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/business/media/30adco.html" target="_blank">Stuart Elliott wrote</a> in his New York Times advertising column in 2006, about a then-unknown cast shooting a pilot. &quot;The female cast members wear long skirts, slips, formidable-looking brassieres and nylon stockings.&quot;</p>
<p>
Elliott would go on to write many columns about the AMC network&#39;s Mad Men&mdash;which premiered on July 19, 2007 and which, with much fanfare, draws to a close with the series finale on May 17&mdash;and he found silver-haired ad executives to be polarized. &quot;Half of the people I talk to from that era are very hard-core fans of the show and say that it is exactly what it was like then,&quot; Elliott, who retired from the Times in 2014 after 23 years, tells Adweek. &quot;And half say the show was completely phony and drummed up for dramatic purposes.&quot;</p>
<p>
Whether the series got the era right or not, what cannot be denied is that it has had an immeasurable impact on this one. Here, some of the more significant ways Mad Men changed our world.</p>
<p>
<strong>It made advertising sexy</strong></p>
<p>
In 2007, procurement departments increasingly were applying the same cost-cutting measures to ad agencies as they did to their copy paper and coffee vendors. Ad executives, priding themselves as trusted advisors, felt slighted&mdash;and it didn&#39;t help that viewers were gleefully TiVo-ing past their commercials. &quot;The ad business,&quot; Elliott recalls, &quot;was kind of in a funk.&quot;</p>
<p>
Enter Jon Hamm as Don Draper. Lantern jawed, crisply dressed and pomaded, he made this pronouncement in the first episode: &quot;Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It&#39;s freedom from fear. It&#39;s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is OK.&quot;</p>
<p>
Music to the ad industry&#39;s ears.</p>
<p>
Bob Jeffrey, who served as worldwide CEO of JWT when the show premiered, notes that it helped provide the industry with a pipeline of aspiring talent. &quot;Mad Men reminded people about what the essence of advertising is: It&#39;s about ideas, creativity and personality,&quot; says Jeffrey, now nonexecutive chairman. &quot;Especially at the beginning of the show, it made it very helpful for recruitment.&quot;</p>
<p>
The executive also notes that as Mad Men took off, the financial industry crashed, meaning recent grads who would have been Wall Street bound started considering Madison Avenue instead.</p>
<p>
Ogilvy &amp; Mather New York also saw an uptick in applicants, according to CEO Lou Aversano. &quot;Our college recruiters heard about Mad Men frequently as a reason that students were getting into advertising, but [now] they see that going down,&quot; he says.</p>
<p>
Edward Russell, an associate professor of advertising at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, reports that about one-third of students who enroll in its Introduction to Advertising course are fans of the show, while &quot;another 10 percent end up binge-watching from the beginning.&quot;</p>
<p>
Mad Men has even become a teaching tool in advertising courses. &quot;Every one of us has probably shown the Carousel scene,&quot; says Russell, referring to the <a href="http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/now-you-can-put-your-own-photos-don-drapers-amazing-carousel-pitch-163464" target="_blank">memorable pitch Don Draper makes to Kodak</a> in the Season 1 finale.</p>
<p>
&nbsp;<strong>It made us wonder why there aren&#39;t more Peggy Olsons</strong></p>
<div class="news-article-image" style="margin: 15px 0px 15px 15px; float: right;">
<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/2015_May/peggy-olsen-01-2015.jpg" /></div>
<p>
One of the pleasures of watching Mad Men is how comically appalling some of the behavior is by today&#39;s standards, like doctors smoking in examination rooms and women smoking and drinking while pregnant. In one episode, the only concern Betty Draper (played by January Jones) has about her young daughter running around the house with a dry-cleaning bag over her head is that the clothes are now on the closet floor.</p>
<p>
Not so easy to laugh off as an artifact, however, is the sexism depicted on the show. Many women in the business love the character Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), who emerges from the secretarial pool to become a copywriter, but they say they still face inequities, particularly on the creative side.</p>
<p>
A mere 11 percent of 161 inductees into the <a href="http://www.oneclub.org/oc/hall-of-fame/" target="_blank">Creative Hall of Fame</a> of The One Club are women. The American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame? Fewer than 9 percent of 242 inductees are women.</p>
<p>
As for the annual Communication Arts Advertising Competition, only 11 percent of creatives who won in 2014 were women, according to an analysis by Karen Mallia of the University of South Carolina and Kasey Windels of Louisiana State University. Female creative directors fared the worst, with just 9 percent of awardees women, up from 1984 (2 percent) and 2004 (3 percent).</p>
<p>
&quot;Most people are looking at Mad Men like it is a historical time capsule,&quot; says Mallia, who spent two decades at New York agencies as a copywriter and creative director. &quot;But the saddest part is that it&#39;s not because the sexist codes go on day and night.&quot;</p>
<p>
Kat Gordon, founder of The 3% Conference (named for Windels&#39; finding in 2008 about the low percentage of women among Communication Arts&#39; awardees), points out that brand advertisers tend to have far better representation of women in leadership positions than agencies.</p>
<p>
&quot;Brands are paying the bill, they know what their customers look like, and they&#39;re increasingly getting fatigued with agencies&mdash;especially in pitch situations&mdash;having all men,&quot; says Gordon.</p>
<p>
Terri Meyer and Sandy Greenberg, who have worked as a creative duo throughout their careers, formed <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/agency-breathes-new-life-iconic-brands-163869" target="_blank">The Terri &amp; Sandy Solution</a> five years ago following 25 years of award-winning work at large agencies but never garnering offers for chief creative officer positions. &quot;Sexism has become a lot more subtle,&quot; says Greenberg. &quot;Maybe we were better off with Peggy Olson knowing that everybody in the office didn&#39;t think she should be a writer, but she kept going and proved them wrong. Because today you don&#39;t see it, you don&#39;t hear it, but it&#39;s happening.</p>
<p>
Jason Chambers, author of Madison Avenue and the Color Line, which includes a chapter on African-American executives in the industry during the 1960s and earlier, is disappointed that Mad Men never featured a black executive.</p>
<p>
&quot;The topic of race could have been worked in in a much more foregrounded kind of way,&quot; notes Chambers, adding that racist comments by likeable characters like Roger Sterling intended as laugh lines might have left some viewers nostalgic for a less politically correct era. &quot;Are people looking at Mad Men in the sense of, &#39;Man, I miss the good old days when we could say what we wanted, when we could be bigots and everyone would leave us alone?&#39;&quot;</p>
<p>
<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/2015_May/MM_mcm3-01-2015.jpg" /></p>
<p>
<strong>It made us want their suits, couches and chairs</strong></p>
<p>
The way that Hamm&#39;s flare ignited men&#39;s interest in fashion and style reminds Esquire fashion director Nick Sullivan of another handsome actor, Sean Connery, who played a rogue with impeccable taste.</p>
<p>
&quot;Mad Men probably had a similar effect that the James Bond films had in the early &#39;60s,&quot; he says. &quot;They showed a life of consumption and a cleanness of design. The talismanic value of products is always attractive to guys, who like the idea of having the right car or the right clothes.&quot;</p>
<p>
In collaboration with Janie Bryant, Mad Men&#39;s Emmy Award-winning costume designer, the retail chain Banana Republic introduced three separate Mad Men collections for women and men, beginning in 2011. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History recently added items from Mad Men to its permanent collection, including props, costumes and set decor, while the Museum of the Moving Image in New York has on display reproductions of sets from the show, including Don Draper&#39;s office.</p>
<p>
A <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mad-about-mid-century-modern/2015/04/03/be825648-d8b1-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html" target="_blank">recent Washington Post article</a> pointed out that furniture manufacturer Herman Miller has seen sales of classic styles by designers like Charles and Ray Eames and Isamu Noguchi surge by 60 percent since the show debuted. Design Within Reach, the modernist retailer, had &quot;nearly folded&quot; by 2009, reported the business news site The Street. But today&mdash;after doing promotions around Mad Men, including a &quot;Get the Look of Mad Men&quot; sweepstakes in 2010&mdash;it enjoys annual growth of better than 20 percent.</p>
<p>
<strong>It gave a boost to Lucky Strike, gimlets and canap&eacute;s</strong></p>
<p>
Don Draper, as it turns out, had the power to add new life to old, sagging brands. Lucky Strike, the adman&#39;s preferred smoke, saw global sales grow 44 percent in the five years following the show&#39;s debut, <a href="http://iveybusinessreview.ca/cms/4636/how-mad-men-lit-up-lucky-strike-sales/" target="_blank">per Ivey Business Review.</a> His favorite liquor, Canadian Club, experienced 4.3 percent annual growth, after suffering sales declines for 17 years prior to the show.</p>
<p>
Classic cocktails featured on Mad Men, including Old Fashioneds, Manhattans and gimlets, are suddenly popular again. (Though claims that Mad Men started the trend are a &quot;little overinflated,&quot; since interest had already been building for a few years, according to Wayne Curtis, who penned a column about cocktails in The Atlantic from 2008 to 2014.) &quot;What Mad Men did was shield the classic cocktail revival from being thought of as too twee, as some Brooklyn thing like artisanal pickles,&quot; Curtis tells Adweek. &quot;It raised interest with a broader group, and the surprising thing about the classic cocktail culture is how deep it has gone.&quot;</p>
<p>
Judy Gelman, co-author with her husband, Peter Zheutlin, of <a href="http://www.unofficialmadmencookbook.com" target="_blank">The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook,</a> notes that cuisine featured on the series&mdash;canap&eacute;s, deviled eggs, pineapple upside-down cake&mdash;have all seen a surge in popularity.</p>
<p>
&quot;I&#39;m 61 and I remember people looking and dressing like these characters, and I think part of the appeal of the food and drink on Mad Men is the nostalgia factor,&quot; says Zheutlin. &quot;There&#39;s a Game of Thrones cookbook, but how many people remember that era?&quot;</p>
<p>
<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/2015_May/mm-cable-01-2015.jpg" /></p>
<p>
<strong>It transformed AMC</strong></p>
<p>
Before Mad Men debuted in 2007, AMC&mdash;originally known as American Movie Classics&mdash;was simply &quot;a movie network,&quot; concedes Charlie Collier, president and general manager of AMC and SundanceTV. &quot;So much of what we set out to do when we greenlit Mad Men,&quot; Collier says, &quot;was create premium television on basic cable.&quot;</p>
<p>
Mission accomplished. From its breakout first season, Mad Men helped cement AMC&#39;s reputation as one of HBO&#39;s most serious challengers for top-shelf original programming. (As it happens, HBO passed on Matthew Weiner&#39;s series&mdash;a decision its execs still regret to this day&mdash;even as he dazzled the network as a producer and writer on The Sopranos.) Premiering the month after The Sopranos wrapped, Mad Men went on to win the Emmy Award for best drama&mdash;the first time a basic cable series had ever achieved that&mdash;and it kept the streak going for the next three seasons.</p>
<p>
More importantly, the show primed audiences, creators and advertisers to expect groundbreaking programming on AMC&mdash;and it delivered, with Breaking Bad in 2008 and The Walking Dead&mdash;currently TV&#39;s highest-rated series in adults 18-49&mdash;in 2010. &quot;Mad Men gave us the start we needed to make the programming investments like Breaking Bad, like The Walking Dead, like Better Call Saul,&quot; Collier points out. &quot;Very few shows in the history of television have affected their entire network the way Mad Men has AMC.&quot;</p>
<p>
Ironically, this series about advertising was never exactly a powerhouse ad vehicle. Not that it mattered so much, as only 38 percent of AMC Networks&#39; revenue comes from ad sales, with 62 percent coming from distribution revenues, primarily fees from cable providers. For AMC, that fee rose to 33 cents per customer per month in 2013, up from 22 cents in 2007&mdash;a 50 percent increase, according SNL Kagan. (Those per-subscriber fees are, of course, paid on behalf of all cable subscribers, not just those who watch the show.) Revenue at AMC Networks was $2.17 billion in 2014, up from $1.18 billion in 2011.</p>
<p>
While the show&#39;s ratings never came close to matching its buzz or critical acclaim (last spring, the first half of Season 7 averaged just 3.7 million total viewers in live plus seven, less than one-quarter that of The Walking Dead), its audience is an affluent one, with nearly half boasting a household income of more than $100,000.</p>
<p>
&quot;You might vet the rating and say it&#39;s not a mass audience, but it was never built to be a mass-audience collector,&quot; says Collier. &quot;It was built to be distinct, it was built to reach an elusive upscale audience&mdash;and it does that in spades.&quot;</p>
TelevisionAMC NetworksBanana RepublicBob JeffreyCommunication ArtsDon DraperElisabeth MossJanuary JonesJon HammJwtKat GordonKodakLou AversanoMad MenMagazine ContentMatt WeinerNewhouseOgilvy & Mather New YorkPeggy OlsonStuart ElliottThe One ClubMon, 11 May 2015 04:00:00 +0000164640 at http://www.adweek.comMad Men Creator Hopes Finale Will Delight Fans, but Not 'Give Them Everything They Want'http://www.adweek.com/news/television/mad-men-creator-hopes-finale-will-delight-fans-not-give-them-everything-they-want-162293
Jason Lynch<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/mad-men-tca-panel-hed-2015.png"> <p>
AMC is calling it &quot;The End of an Era,&quot; and that&#39;s not hyperbole.</p>
<p>
Mad Men, the network&#39;s signature show, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/mad-mens-final-episodes-get-premiere-date-april-5-162292" target="_blank">is coming to an end.</a> Its final seven episodes begin airing at 10 p.m. ET Sunday, April 5, which would put the series finale on May 17.</p>
<p>
Creator Matt Weiner and the show&#39;s original six cast members (Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, January Jones, Vincent Kartheiser, Christina Hendricks and John Slattery) assembled Saturday at the Television Critics Association&#39;s winter press tour to reflect on the show&#39;s legacy&mdash;and tease its &quot;surprise&quot; conclusion.</p>
<p>
The theme for the final run of episodes: &quot;People do change, but in a lot of ways, they don&#39;t, unfortunately,&quot; Moss said.</p>
<p>
After wrapping production on the series last spring, &quot;I&#39;m excited to unspool this and for people to see it,&quot; Weiner said. &quot;There is something amazing about AMC and Lionsgate letting us do this story and letting us end it how we want to end it. ... It&#39;s close to a decade in the lives of these characters, which was sort of the intention from the beginning.&quot;</p>
<p>
Weiner said the final seven episodes will refocus on the show&#39;s six core characters, much like the first season did. &quot;Each [episode] feels like the finale of the show,&quot; Weiner said. &quot;I didn&#39;t want to leave anything on the floor.&quot;</p>
<p>
That said, Weiner admitted he also didn&#39;t want to craft a finale that would spark fan outrage, like last spring&#39;s How I Met Your Mother conclusion did.</p>
<p>
&quot;I&#39;m trying to delight them and confound them, and not frustrate and irritate them. I don&#39;t want them to walk away angry,&quot; Weiner said of Mad Men viewers. But at the same time, &quot;I don&#39;t want to pander to them. ... Sometimes, people have to be protected from what they want to see happen. You can&#39;t just give them everything they want.&quot;</p>
<p>
To Weiner, delighting fans doesn&#39;t necessarily mean giving them a happy ending.</p>
<p>
&quot;Part of entertainment can be catharsis,&quot; he said. &quot;Bad things happening are considered a good experience in entertainment.&quot;</p>
<p>
No matter how viewers feel about the finale, the cast said they were thrilled by Weiner&#39;s endgame.</p>
<p>
&quot;It&#39;s a beautiful story,&quot; January Jones said of the finale script. &quot;It&#39;s perfect, in a way. I read it over and over again.&quot;</p>
<p>
As for Moss: &quot;I was definitely surprised in the best way&quot; by the ending.</p>
<p>
Added Hendricks: &quot;I thought, &#39;You know what? That makes sense.&#39; I was very, very pleased.&quot;</p>
<p>
For Hamm, the realization that he has played Don Draper for the last time has hit him hard. &quot;I&#39;m so looking forward to being unemployed,&quot; he deadpanned. &quot;There&#39;s no version of this ending that is not super painful for me. ... I will never be able to have this again&mdash;and that&#39;s a drag.&quot;</p>
<p>
But as Breaking Bad proved with its upcoming Better Call Saul spinoff, those characters could still have TV life in them.</p>
<p>
Hamm&#39;s prediction? &quot;Better Call Pete!&quot;</p>
<p>
Spinoffs aside, Weiner also talked about his new role going forward, overseeing and protecting the Mad Men brand. During its run, &quot;we&#39;ve tried to limit its exploitation to things that are related to the show,&quot; said Weiner, who vowed to continue that approach in the years to come. &quot;I don&#39;t see the show participating in a Mad Men cruise.&quot; (All the actors, however, joked that they would happily attend one.)</p>
<p>
No matter what he does for the rest of his career, Weiner knows that Mad Men will always remain with him. &quot;I don&#39;t think I&#39;ll ever let it go,&quot; he said.</p>
TelevisionChristina HendricksElisabeth MossJanuary JonesJohn SlatteryJon HammMad MenMatt WeinerTelevision Critics AssociationVincent KartheiserSat, 10 Jan 2015 22:08:09 +0000162293 at http://www.adweek.comThe Long Goodbye: Mad Men Cast Begins Victory Laphttp://www.adweek.com/news/television/long-goodbye-mad-men-cast-begins-victory-lap-156474
Anthony Crupi<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/mad-men-panel-hed-2014.jpg"> <p>
While he wasn&rsquo;t physically onstage during Friday night&rsquo;s PaleyFest panel, <a href="http://www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men" target="_blank">Mad Men</a> creator Matt Weiner cast a long shadow over the proceedings&mdash;so much so that the only potential spoilers leaked by the stars of the <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/television/man-who-turned-amc-creative-empire-148422" target="_blank">AMC</a> drama were decidedly tongue-in-cheek.</p>
<p>
Addressing the obsessive online speculation about the fate of her character, Megan Draper&mdash;a T-shirt she wore onscreen in Season 6 had fans making <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/pare-addresses-megan-draper-sharon-tate-mad-men-theory.html" target="_blank">grim associations</a> between her and the doomed actress Sharon Tate&mdash;Jessica Par&eacute; joked that there was no guarantee that any cast member would make it out alive.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;Maybe we&rsquo;re all dead, guys!&rdquo; Par&eacute; said, before adding that she has no idea what&rsquo;s in store for Megan or any other Mad Men mainstay.</p>
<p>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkIPwx7_6Vg" target="_blank">Jon Hamm</a>, who plays the brooding cocktail enthusiast Don Draper, suggested that he has pieced together an educated guess as to how the show will end, before reiterating that Weiner keeps his own counsel. &ldquo;I think some of us know where our characters are going to be, but I don&rsquo;t think any of us have the scope, tone or vibe of the whole,&rdquo; Hamm said. &ldquo;And that&rsquo;s probably been consistent throughout. &hellip; Matt will tell us certain things about what&rsquo;s going on in the characters&rsquo; lives.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Much of the conversation, which was moderated by <a href="https://twitter.com/franklinavenue" target="_blank">TV Guide&rsquo;s Michael Schneider</a>, had to do with the inevitable end of the Emmy Award-winning period drama. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re in some phase of grief at this point and it&rsquo;s probably denial,&rdquo; Hamm said. &ldquo;We are collectively realizing that the end is coming, and there&rsquo;s nothing you can do to prepare for it.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
<a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/03/elisabeth-moss-on-mad-mens-final-season.html" target="_blank">Elisabeth Moss</a> (Peggy Olson) echoed Hamm&rsquo;s sentiment, saying, &ldquo;It is definitely starting to sink in that we are going to have to say goodbye, not only to our characters, but, you know, this family.&rdquo; Without missing a beat, Moss joked about distancing herself from her co-workers once the show wraps. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t plan on seeing these people ever again,&rdquo; she said.</p>
<p>
While links to the Season 7 premiere were distributed to media outlets earlier this week, AMC did not screen the episode at <a href="http://media.paleycenter.org/paleyfest-2014-lineup/" target="_blank">PaleyFest</a>. Instead, attendees were presented with the gloomy &ldquo;In Care Of,&rdquo; which is where the Mad Men story left off last June.</p>
<p>
As much as Don Draper has made a beautiful ruin of his life, submarining his position at the ad agency with his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxMef0hYIWw" target="_blank">raw Hershey&rsquo;s pitch</a> while alienating his wife and precocious daughter, Sally, it would be unwise to write him off completely. &ldquo;The one overriding principle is that Don is a survivor,&rdquo; Hamm said. &ldquo;He rises to the challenge.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Still, as Vincent Kartheiser (Pete Campbell) pointed out, no matter how good Don looks while he&rsquo;s medicating his existential angst with gin and vermouth, he&rsquo;s no longer an enviable figure. &ldquo;Season 1, everyone wanted to be Don Draper,&rdquo; Kartheiser said. &ldquo;Slowly, less and less people do.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
In keeping with the elegiac nature of the panel discussion, Robert Morse (Bert Cooper) spoke of the &ldquo;empty feeling&rdquo; the cast faces as they reach the end of what has been a seven-year collaboration. &ldquo;Ending Mad Men is difficult because you&rsquo;re used to so many years of being together,&rdquo; Morse said. &ldquo;Unless we can change his mind, we&rsquo;re going to miss it. But it&rsquo;s something that happens in life. You grapple with it, but you go on.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Or as the 14-year-old <a href="http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/sally-draper-makes-excellent-child-psychologist-136002" target="_blank">Kiernan Shipka</a>, who has grown up in public as Sally Draper, said, &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been on the show longer than I haven&rsquo;t. To not know what Sally&rsquo;s going to be up to anymore&mdash;that&rsquo;s kind of sad.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
(The often lugubrious panel discussion could have used a shot of the antic and arch John Slattery, but the actor was a no-show. January Jones also failed to make an appearance.)</p>
<p>
A relative newcomer to the series, having joined the cast in Season 4, Par&eacute; perhaps offered the most clear-eyed assessment of the inevitable end of Mad Men. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a privilege to be able to <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/television/breaking-bad-finale-draws-103-million-viewers-152804" target="_blank">tell the end of the story</a>,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a luxury that not many TV shows get.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Season 7 of Mad Men kicks off on Sunday, April 13, on AMC. The network will stagger the final run, airing seven episodes this spring before wrapping things up for good in 2015.</p>
TelevisionAmcBert CooperCableDon DraperElisabeth MossJanuary JonesJessica ParéJohn SlatteryJon HammKiernan ShipkaMad MenMatt WeinerPaleyFestPeggy OlsonPete CampbellRatingsRobert MorseSally DraperVincent KartheiserSat, 22 Mar 2014 11:47:56 +0000156474 at http://www.adweek.comThe Genius Who Produces ‘Pure’ Televisionhttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/genius-who-produces-pure-television-150258
Anthony Crupi<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/fea-englishman-01-2013.jpg"> <p>
For reasons that are not immediately apparent, the girl with the vodka tonic is taking pictures of the actress on the Embassy Row TV monitor, even though the real thing is, at this very moment, perched on a chair inside the studio that lies just on the other side of the wall. Every time she captures a shot with her iPhone, the girl glances at the palmed screen, and in the owl-inflected argot of her generation, lets out a little &ldquo;Woot!&rdquo; before walking over to show the latest photo to her two equally excitable friends.</p>
<p>
It&rsquo;s the Tuesday before Memorial Day weekend and we&rsquo;re standing in the cramped control room of the Bravo chat show <a href="http://www.bravotv.com/watch-what-happens-live‎" target="_blank">Watch What Happens Live</a>, which is hosted by Andy Cohen, a St. Louisan who is perhaps the only surviving member of Generation X who can get away with tossing out the occasional &ldquo;Woot!&rdquo; of his own. The actress in question is <a href="http://www.adweek.com/.../elisabeth-moss-has-become-ad-aficionada-148319‎" target="_blank">Elisabeth Moss from AMC&rsquo;s Mad Men</a>; seated alongside her is Arrested Development&rsquo;s mad matriarch, Jessica Walter.</p>
<p>
What&rsquo;s happening is, Cohen has Moss (for the uninitiated, she plays Peggy Olson on Matt Weiner&rsquo;s celebrated angst-athon) on the hot seat for his &ldquo;Plead the Fifth&rdquo; segment, in which he grills guests with a series of questions that are only slightly less puerile than George Wayne&rsquo;s Vanity Fair Q&amp;As. Which is to say, he makes more sponsor-friendly inquiries into the state of other people&rsquo;s genitals and, in this case at least, the intestinal fortitude of a certain widely reviled actor.</p>
<p>
The deal with &ldquo;Plead the Fifth&rdquo; is that you can choose to not answer one of the three questions Cohen serves up, although no one ever seems to exercise the option. After the inevitable anatomical query about Moss&rsquo; co-star Jon Hamm and a softball about the Mad Men cast&rsquo;s collective enthusiasm for booze, Cohen serves up a big, fat meatball: &ldquo;What, besides eating too much sushi, caused Jeremy Piven to leave Speed-the-Plow?&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Moss tears the cover off the ball. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good one, that&rsquo;s a very good one. I could go on and on,&rdquo; she laughs, before sending the horsehide over the right-field porch of Cohen&rsquo;s beloved Busch Stadium. &ldquo;Being highly unprofessional.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
The audience hoots as Moss watches the ball sail into the upper deck. &ldquo;It came out of nowhere,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;He just didn&rsquo;t come back one day. I saw him, like, a month later at the Golden Globes when he was supposed to be really sick.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Sure, the incident in question occurred in 2008 and Piven later was absolved of a breach-of-contract suit by a professional arbiter, but Moss delivered the sort of riposte that seemed almost destined to go as viral as H1N1. The crowd goes wild.</p>
<p>
Grinning as if Chelsea had just gone up 1-0 on Arsenal at Stamford Bridge, Michael Davies, the Englishman who runs Embassy Row and is the presiding genius who produces WWHL and dozens of other programs, appears delighted with what he sees. &ldquo;This is as pure as television gets,&rdquo; Davies says as the show slips into a commercial break.</p>
<p>
<strong>Maintaining Momentum </strong></p>
<p>
If Watch What Happens Live is more or less the flagship program of Embassy Row (the show is telecast from the company&rsquo;s office in not quite Tribeca, aka Hudson Square), it only represents a small fraction of Davies&rsquo; pop-culture obsessions. Take zombies, for instance. (As a fan of the England national football team, is it any wonder that Davies enjoys watching ambulatory corpses staggering around the countryside?) After closing out its second season on AMC in front of a broadcast-busting 5.16 million viewers and a 2.6 in the adults 18-49 demo, Talking Dead now stands as Embassy Row&rsquo;s highest-rated series. A geeked-out post-mortem of TV&rsquo;s top-rated scripted series, <a href="http://www.adweek.com/news/television/jesus-battles-zombies-both-claim-victory-148337" target="_blank">The Walking Dead</a>, the Chris Hardwick-helmed gabfest earns a higher CPM than everything in its competitive set.</p>
<p>
While WWHL and Talking Dead may be Nielsen outliers&mdash;since the year began, Cohen&rsquo;s 11 p.m. show is beating all comers in delivery of women 18-49 and 25-54 demos, including E!&rsquo;s Chelsea Lately, Comedy Central&rsquo;s The Daily Show and TBS&rsquo; Conan&mdash;Davies isn&rsquo;t at all interested in coasting. In the past two weeks, Embassy Row, which is owned by Sony Pictures Television, has launched a pair of new series: the live chatter show Style Pop on NBCUniversal&rsquo;s Style network and the personality-driven Sunday night interview show Stroumboulopoulos on CNN.</p>
<p>
That said, perhaps the most anticipated new series in <a href="http://embassyrow.com/‎" target="_blank">Embassy Row </a>history may well be the special one-off sidecar that&rsquo;s meant to ride alongside the final eight episodes of AMC&rsquo;s Breaking Bad. Davies had but one host in mind when he pitched AMC on Talking Bad, and while the contracts have yet to be signed, he&rsquo;s confident that Chris Hardwick will be present and accounted for when the show bows on Aug. 11. &ldquo;We heavily intend for Chris to do Talking Bad,&rdquo; Davies says. &ldquo;We are having conversations with no one else.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Another major opportunity for Embassy Row will reunite Davies with his old partner in crime, Regis Francis Xavier Philbin. The two first worked together when Davies served as executive producer of ABC&rsquo;s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. A week after Talking Bad bows, Embassy Row will take the wraps off Crowd Goes Wild, a daily drive-time (5 p.m.-6 p.m.) roundtable hosted by Philbin and a panel of jocks, journalists and other sports enthusiasts that will run on Fox Sports&rsquo; would-be rival to ESPN, FS1.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;When Fox told me that they&rsquo;d made a deal with Regis, I thought, &lsquo;My god, I&rsquo;d love to produce that show,&rsquo;&rdquo; Davies recalls. &ldquo;There&rsquo;s definitely an emotional component to that, which is I care so much about the man I really want to make sure that this show is as successful as it possibly can be for him.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Lest one imagine that Davies is an irredeemable softie, he makes it clear that he would very much like Crowd Goes Wild to make a sizeable dent in the marketplace. &ldquo;There are lots of shows on television about sports but they&rsquo;re either news shows like SportsCenter, or debate shows like Pardon the Interruption, or single point-of-view shows&mdash;Jim Rome, Michelle Beadle, Dan LeBatard,&rdquo; Davies says. &ldquo;What was missing, really, is a talk show that at its very core &hellip; takes what entertainment shows have done. And that&rsquo;s not only covering content but creating content that makes it part of the conversation.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Davies won&rsquo;t say much about the particulars of the new FS1 series, although Fox Sports said that Crowd Goes Wild will be telecast from Silver Springs Studios in New York&rsquo;s Chelsea Piers, a hulking sports complex that juts out into the Hudson River about a mile north of the Embassy Row offices.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;We&rsquo;re going to have an enormous amount of fun,&rdquo; Davies says. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s going to be live every single day and we&rsquo;re going to create a lot of content. And we believe we&rsquo;re going to make a lot of news ourselves, which is exactly the model that we go to on Watch What Happens Live.&rdquo; As he says this, a roar comes up from the WWHL studio, a diorama that seats around 20 cocktail-sipping guests. Such is Cohen&rsquo;s sway over WWHL fans that they cheer even when he&rsquo;s just recording promos for upcoming episodes.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;The things that get said in this little studio here, they resonate in media the next day, in the world of pop culture,&rdquo; Davies says, as the noise reaches a fever pitch. (Down the hall, Moss and Walter are taking their seats across from Cohen.) &ldquo;We intend the same thing to happen in sports and across sports media.&rdquo;</p>
<!--pagebreak-->
<p>
<strong>ABC&rsquo;s Breadwinner </strong></p>
<p>
If you&rsquo;re an Englishman and your name isn&rsquo;t Liam Gallagher, odds are pretty solid that you&rsquo;re not particularly comfortable with talking up your own accomplishments. Davies is no exception, although it&rsquo;s not difficult to find people in the business who think highly of him.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;One of the things I love about Michael is he&rsquo;s got insanely great energy and he&rsquo;s also a pop culture connoisseur in that he appreciates the art and beauty of it all,&rdquo; says Joel Stillerman, AMC&rsquo;s evp of original programming, production and digital content. &ldquo;And then there&rsquo;s the entrepreneurial side, where he can actually monetize all the great ideas he has. It&rsquo;s a killer combo.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
A former agent who worked with Davies during his ABC stint (he served as evp, alternative series and specials from 1998 until he took the reins at Millionaire the following summer) says that the TV vet has so many good ideas, the network couldn&rsquo;t keep up with him. &ldquo;ABC had it in for him after he brought them The Man Show,&rdquo; the agent says. &ldquo;Jamie [Tarses, then head of ABC&rsquo;s entertainment unit] was so put off by the pilot that she wanted to squeeze him out. Next thing you know, he&rsquo;s bringing in Millionaire &hellip; and The Man Show went on to be a big hit for Comedy Central.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
<img alt="" src="/files/fea-englishman-02-2013.jpg" style="width: 652px; height: 564px;" /></p>
<p>
If nothing else, ABC perhaps should consider installing a plaque in the lobby of its Burbank headquarters. Not only was Millionaire a runaway hit&mdash;the show went a long way toward enabling ABC to book a then-record $2.45 billion in the 2000-&rsquo;01 upfront, up 44 percent from the previous year&rsquo;s bazaar&mdash;but Davies is also responsible for introducing the network to its late-night scion.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;Michael did Win Ben Stein&rsquo;s Money and The Man Show, both with Jimmy Kimmel,&rdquo; the agent says. &ldquo;He made the guy a TV star. If not for Michael Davies, ABC would still be running Ted Koppel in late night.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
One of the ways Davies stands out from the rest of the production pack is that he&rsquo;s forever thinking about the realities of the television economy. To put it in the simplest terms, anyone who thinks that the legacy advertising model isn&rsquo;t in mortal danger is trafficking in the most deliberate strain of self delusion.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;The decline in viewership during commercial breaks and the fact that how, even in a very successful show, very few people return after you go to commercial break is like a dirty little secret,&rdquo; Davies says. &ldquo;With so much content available in so many ways and with no commercial interruptions, we have raised a generation of viewers&mdash;and I&rsquo;m not just talking about my kids, I&rsquo;m talking about, you know, 40-year-olds; I mean, I don&rsquo;t watch commercials anymore, and I understand that&rsquo;s what supports my business&mdash;who are absolutely averse to sitting through the ads. That&rsquo;s a problem.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
To that end, Davies is developing content with the advertising baked right in. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m constantly thinking about &hellip; how on earth I can figure out a way to keep people through commercials, or minimize the number of commercials that exist within it,&rdquo; Davies says. &ldquo;Right now, the best place to go and spend money is network and cable television. When media buyers get spooked, the brands are going to stop giving them those massive budgets. That&rsquo;s when everything really, really changes.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
Embassy Row&rsquo;s new fashion-forward chat show, <a href="http://embassyrow.com/archives/style-pop" target="_blank">Style Pop</a>, takes on the ad-avoidance problem head-on. The June 6 premiere of the Style network series was loaded with product placements, demos and special offers designed to encourage viewers to interact with Style.com and keep their thumbs off the TV remote.</p>
<p>
If the Style Pop experiment is relatively risk-free (per Nielsen, the channel in May averaged just 56,000 women 18-49), Davies&rsquo; willingness to tinker with the formula demonstrates his fiduciary savvy. &ldquo;The ratings for [WWHL] are fantastic, but let&rsquo;s be honest: the cost is a very important consideration,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;The networks get to make expensive shows because they make some shows which are lower cost. Without reality television, nearly all of these networks would be broke.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
That unflinching honesty is one of the things that endears Davies to his network partners. &ldquo;With Talking Dead, the brilliance of the idea is encapsulated in the title of that first show he did for Bravo,&rdquo; Stillerman says. &ldquo;&lsquo;Watch What Happens&rsquo;&shy;&mdash;those are some pretty powerful words. And when you consider how cost efficient these sort of shows really are&mdash;well, these are some pretty powerful ideas.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
<strong>Davies&rsquo; Legacy</strong></p>
<p>
Surrounded by a bunch of his personal effects, like a minor Pharaoh of a ruined tchotchke civilization propped up in a glittering tomb, Andy Cohen is gearing up for the second show of the night. (In order to accommodate Moss and Walter&rsquo;s schedules and make allowances for the upcoming holiday, the WWHL team agrees to tape the appearance well in advance of the regular live show at 11 p.m. EDT.)</p>
<p>
While the live show is a bit of a letdown when compared to the star-powered taping (the guests are media curiosities Ray J and Vinny Guadagnino), Davies is catholic in his approach to pop culture.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;Look, we&rsquo;ve had Meryl Streep on the show. We&rsquo;ve booked phenomenal people to be on this program,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Watch What Happens Live is a superb show, and it&rsquo;s created this business for us, which has been really phenomenal.&rdquo;</p>
<p>
He&rsquo;s about to head back to his office down the hall, but before he leaves the studio, Davies becomes reflective. &ldquo;For a while, I thought my tombstone would read, &lsquo;Michael Davies, Game Show Producer,&rsquo;&rdquo; he laughs. &ldquo;But this show really kick started me back into the talk show business, which is really where I came from at the start of my career.</p>
<p>
&ldquo;You know, making hit shows is never easy. Millionaire was never easy for a second. It was the biggest struggle to persuade ABC to do that&mdash;and I was an insider,&rdquo; Davies says. &ldquo;There will be another network prime-time show in my future. But as was the case with Millionaire, which came from such an unconventional source&mdash;a British game show coming to the U.S. to go in prime time? With Regis Philbin hosting? Heresy!&mdash;I think the next hit will be completely unexpected in that same way. The concepts that tend to hit are the things that come from so far in left field and they come from platforms that you wouldn&rsquo;t quite expect.&rdquo;</p>
Advertising & BrandingTelevisionAmcAndy CohenArrested DevelopmentBravoChelsea LatelyChris HardwickConanCrowd Goes WildE!Elisabeth MossFS1Golden GlobesJeremy PivenMagazine ContentMichael DaviesRegis PhilbinSportscenterTalking DeadThe Man ShowThe Walking DeadWatch What Happens LiveWho Wants to be a MillionaireTue, 18 Jun 2013 03:17:20 +0000150258 at http://www.adweek.com'Smoke Some Grass and See What Happens'http://www.adweek.com/video/advertising-branding/smoke-some-grass-and-see-what-happens-148804
<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/1126101268_2318686442001_video-still-for-video-2318714277001_0.jpgpubid1126101268"> This week's '60s madness in a Mad Men MinuteAdvertising & BrandingAdweek OrginalChristina HendricksElisabeth MossJon HammMad Men MinuteMon, 22 Apr 2013 15:13:38 +0000148804 at http://www.adweek.comElisabeth Moss Has Become an Ad Aficionadahttp://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/elisabeth-moss-has-become-ad-aficionada-148319
Emma Bazilian<img src="http://www.adweek.com/files/imagecache/node-detail/news_article/info-diet-elizabeth-moss-hed-2013.jpg"> <p>
<img alt="" src="/files/uploads/SPACER-652.gif" style="width: 10px; height: 1px; " /><br />
<strong><u>Specs</u></strong><br />
<strong>Who</strong> Elisabeth Moss<br />
<strong>Age </strong>30<br />
<strong>Accomplishments</strong> Portrays Peggy Olson on <a href="/node/147688">AMC&rsquo;s Mad Men</a> (<a href="/node/147862">season 6 premieres on April 7</a>); currently stars as Robin Griffin on Sundance Channel&rsquo;s mini-series <a href="http://www.sundancechannel.com/series/top-of-the-lake" target="_blank">Top of the Lake</a> (Mondays at 9 p.m.)<br />
<strong>Bases</strong> New York and Los Angeles<br />
<br />
<strong>What&rsquo;s the first information you consume in the morning?</strong><br />
To a probably unhealthy degree, I&rsquo;m attached to my phone. So the first thing I do is check any texts or emails I&rsquo;ve gotten. Then, on the computer, it depends on if I&rsquo;m being a good girl or not. If I&rsquo;m feeling like I need to do something mindless, I&rsquo;ll go to People or The Huffington Post&mdash;not the serious sections&mdash;or Just Jared, stuff like that. If I&rsquo;m being good, I&rsquo;ll try to answer emails.<br />
<br />
<strong>What occupies your mind in the car or subway?</strong><br />
In L.A., I love just listening to music. Nobody likes driving in L.A., but it is kind of nice when you get to just listen to music and chill out. I&rsquo;m obsessed with the Mumford and Sons album, like everyone else in the world. And at night when I&rsquo;m driving home from work, I like listening to country music.<br />
<br />
<strong>Are you a TV junkie, and what do you watch?</strong><br />
I really love television, and I love my DVR&mdash;we have a very special relationship. I suppose my obsession is anything on the Bravo network. I watch all of the <a href="/node/144208">Real Housewives</a> shows, and when they do the marathons, I watch those to catch up so I&rsquo;m prepared for the new season. I&rsquo;m also watching <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULwUzF1q5w4" target="_blank">House of Cards</a>, Nashville, Parenthood&hellip;<br />
<br />
<strong>How about late night shows?</strong><br />
I love Colbert and I watch it when I can, but I&rsquo;m usually too busy catching up with my DVR. I do watch Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen on Bravo. It&rsquo;s awesome. I&rsquo;m going to be on it in a few weeks! I need them to reserve an hour or two because I have a lot to say.<br />
<br />
<strong>What do you do to wind down before bed?</strong><br />
I like to read because that really chills me out. Usually I&rsquo;ll read on my phone, actually, on <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/built-in-apps/" target="_blank">iBooks</a>. But I love books, so even if I buy a book on iBooks, I&rsquo;ll buy the real copy just to have it. I just started reading the Chelsea Handler book, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_That_Chelsea_Handler_Told_Me" target="_blank">Lies that Chelsea Handler Told Me</a>. She&rsquo;s so funny and strong and cool.<br />
<br />
<strong>When you&rsquo;re shooting Mad Men, do you use any apps or games to occupy your time between takes?</strong><br />
Everybody plays Words With Friends with each other&mdash;that&rsquo;s the big thing on set&mdash;but it&rsquo;s too hard for me! I don&rsquo;t want to think that much.<br />
<br />
<strong>Do you ever read magazines or newspapers from the &rsquo;60s to get into character?</strong><br />
Not to get into character, but just out of boredom. They have all the old Life magazines on set as props, and it&rsquo;s always really interesting to open them up and read interviews with people like Elizabeth Taylor now that we know what their lives ended up to be. I also love looking at the ads. We have boards in the office that are filled with finished ads or ads that are in process, and I always end up staring at them.<br />
<br />
<strong>What do you think about the ads from that era?</strong><br />
What I find interesting in some of the older ads is how much copy there was. There would be an actual paragraph about the product. Now it&rsquo;s very much about the visuals and catching someone&rsquo;s attention in a world where we don&rsquo;t have time to stop.<br />
<br />
<strong>What are your favorite recent ads?</strong><br />
I like those ones for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0FL1AzCAJ8" target="_blank">AT&amp;T with the guy talking to the kids</a>. He just sells it! It&rsquo;s great. And I really loved those old Apple ads from the &rsquo;80s that would just make you cry. They were amazing.<br />
<br />
<strong>Have you found yourself paying more attention to advertising since you joined Mad Men?</strong><br />
Definitely. It&rsquo;s not something that I ever thought I&rsquo;d have any sort of connection to, but I&rsquo;ve always had a great appreciation for advertising. I think it&rsquo;s cool that you can get these big directors and cinematographers to make commercials that are really beautiful. I love when people elevate this commercial business into art.</p>
Advertising & BrandingColbert ReportElisabeth MossElizabeth TaylorHouse of Cardsinformation dietLife magazineMad MenMagazine ContentMumford and SonsNashvilleParenthoodPeopleSundance ChannelThe Huffington PostWatch What Happens Live with Andy CohenWords With FriendsTue, 02 Apr 2013 02:54:46 +0000148319 at http://www.adweek.com